Princess Of Undersea: A Timeless Tale by Leslie Conzatti

Odds are even if you’ve never read The Little Mermaid or watched Disney’s movie of it, you at least think you know the story. In Princess of Undersea, Leslie takes that familiar story and puts a fresh spin on it, adding a more realistic approach to how such a story would unfold. It also has an open ending, rather then the insinuation of happily ever after, which really adds to the realistic feel. Not to worry though, at no point does Leslie allow her approach to overwhelm the fairy tale feel of the story, achieving a very nice balance between the two.

One of the key differences is in her story, mer-folk physically look more like how they might if they were real rather than the traditional upper-human body/fish tail appearance. The majority of the characters are fleshed out and have a more modern feel to them. In addition, she manages to capture the reader in that despite having an idea how the story might go, you are still just as hooked and caught up in the story, with a few surprise twists as well.

Aiding the story in how well it reads and how there are room for surprise twists is it stays very centrally focused on only a few characters, meaning we only know the scenes they are in. I, for one, am hoping an additional book comes out that either showcases what happens next or showcases what was happening in those scenes we didn’t get to see this time. It’s a book one could easily have a lot of fun reading out loud to an audience of nearly any age.